Lower-than-expected PlayStation Vita sales in Japan have led many to sound doomsday alarms. Sony's newest handheld system hasn't even officially been released worldwide and already many are willing to throw in the towel and write it off as a bust.

Sony continues to deny rumor after rumor, the latest coming from Japanese publication Nikkei, claiming that Japanese developers are cancelling their PlayStation Vita games to work on the Nintendo 3DS. The report, which Sony says is "largely exaggerated", mentioned a quote from an anonymous source that said “major Japanese companies are canceling all projects intended for Vita and are changing development to the 3DS.”

Sony, on the other hand, is completely denying the rumor. Speaking to Gamasutra, Sony's senior vice president of Worldwide Studios, Scott Rohde, said this simply isn't the case. "I did not see that quote," Rohde said of the rumor in the article written by former head of Japan's IGDA branch, Kiyoshi Shin. "But you see extremist quotes like that all the time."

"I mean, obviously, there is no way anyone could stand in front of a camera and say that all developers are changing focus from one platform to another, no matter what it is."

In fact, Rohde says quite the opposite about development for Vita titles.

"I know many, many, many third party developers and publishers are feverishly working on Vita titles, not just for now, but for the foreseeable future," he rebutted.

As for the rumor, Rohde said, "There's always going to be the hot platform of the moment in our industry. There's always going to be reason to talk about a story like that."

He added: "You can, whatever -- rewind two years ago. Every developer was you knew was selling -- going towards -- I was going to say 'selling their soul', it almost came out -- to go build games for Zynga and the Facebook platform. And there's another time when you see everyone is going to do smaller iPad games, or iOS games in general. Then it was PS3, it was 360, it's Vita, it's 3DS. It's always, constantly changing. It's not something that concerns me whatsoever."

The PlayStation Vita officially launches February 22nd in the United States and Europe, but those who have pre-ordered the handheld device have been able to pick it up already.

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Matt Liebl
You can follow Editor-in-Chief Matt Liebl on Twitter @Matt_GZ. He likes games, sports, musicals, and his adorable dog, Wrigley, and his wife.